One type of carrier commonly used to package twelve or twenty-four beverage cans is formed from a generally rectangular paperboard blank which is folded and glued by the blank manufacturer into a sleeve-like configuration. The blanks are then shipped to bottling plants in generally flat collapsed condition where they are opened into sleeve form, loaded through their open ends with cans, and closed by folding and sealing the end flaps in place. These operations are performed automatically at very high speeds and unless precisely controlled can become snarled. One sensitive area of control is the beverage can sorting and feeding mechanism for feeding six cans from each side into the sleeve when loading a carrier designed to hold twelve cans. The same problems are present when feeding twelve cans from each side when loading a carrier designed to hold twenty-four cans or when feeding any desired number of cans from each side when loading a carrier designed to hold twice that number. Although it would be desirable to be able to load both sizes of carriers on the same packaging machine, this requires a machine whose can feed mechanism is not only fast and reliably able to segregate the cans into groups of the correct number for loading, but one which also can be quickly converted from running one size carrier to the other. Until this invention, such a machine has not been available.